I close my eyes
Note: I wrote this poem on May 1. It’s been through several revisions and I think it’s ready to be up here, despite its lack of a title. Hope you like it.
——-
I close my eyes
And my starving heart
Swallows the memory
Of an instant you looked at me
With wanting
When the world knew
Nothing but that you
Would not love me
Your negligence washes down
That one look
Like the bitter chaser
To a cool, quick shot
Of head-spinning happiness
I’ll bottle for later
I need
The fortifying liquor
Of one breath’s length of
Contentment
To pit against the lifetime of
Loneliness
I’ll measure out my
Emptiness
A fifth of dark longing
Laced with self-loathing
On lots of ice
You ignore me again
And I close my eyes
For one more round
Of remembering
Look—heartskip—hope
This time will you hold your gaze?
I get drunk on the gaping lack
The heady void of inattention
All the times
You talk at around and through me
Even though the great secret
Rests below the surface:
You were once
Intoxicated enough
By my ways
To look with a desire
I’ll never forget
Even if you do
From the Vault
From the Vault
During the summer of 2006, my friend Chris and I were in the same Creative Writing class. It was a significant time in our lives and we had a lot of material to work into poetry. I was struggling with a broken spirit, he was exploring new worlds. These two pieces came out of the many words we exchanged on the subject of long-awaited, necessary change.
CHRIS
He locked his secrets
In the old cigar box smelling of
Still-lingering Havanan decadence; to
Scraps of lonely paper, he
Entrusted his hopes and fears;
His lies and deceptions he
Shackled in dark ink, scribbling
Chicken scratched struggles he
Buried in drifts of crumpled paper, entombed eternally
To fade.
To the battered old box he abandoned them, tossing
yellow shreds of paper, leaves long left brittle and broken
sighing softly in quiet sleep, they slowly
suffocated under the stifling silence of
years deserted in darkness.
A day of grey skies whipped by winds whispered freedom
Wet trees shook with dewy joy; the defiant scream
Of circling gulls called the boy cast his heart
To the breeze.
Grabbing his puzzle box, he
Clutched under eager arms his
Treasure long tethered;
Running, jumping,
Walls of drowning moss, dripping mist, climbing on,
Atop the edge of sliding cliffs,
Hanging over the sea’s raging abandon.
Throwing open the clasped lid;
One final fleeting look,
He smiled to see old friend,
Already fluttering with breathless anticipation between caged fingers
Inky lines writhing in restless furor
He flung them—
They scattered into the rising breeze, dancing
Whirling over the raging sea
Seabirds soaring through infinite skies.
MAURA
He caressed our crinkled faces
Rubbing sticking pressing
His thoughts onto us
And then locked us carefully away
Deep in the dark we waited
It was impossible to breathe
But we bided
As best we could
So that when that
First blinding shot of light
Streaked across us
We curled in smiles
Beating fast in the breeze
Too excited to be contained any longer
He slipped us between his fingers
We hung in his hold
The air was cold and wet
It shocked our dry yellowed skin
In the moment we were closest to him
He threw us out and over the cliff
For an imperceptible instant
We stalled
Caught in the wind
And then fell
Fluttering so frantically it hurt
We drifted forever
And never hit the water
Though it tried to drown us
In its rage below
Trapped in an infinite fall
I would rather be back in the box
To Chris’ credit, he was more sympathetic to my life than maybe I was to his.
CHRIS
She turns
emotions rising bitter
on her tongue
but;
tired
(the weight of the world is too
heavy on slender shoulders)
she
simply
sighs.
MAURA
You are an elephant in my antique shop
I was behind the counter when I heard unusually thunderous steps. The bells on the door clanged furiously. I glanced up just as you stomped on the harpsichord. The keys groaned at the uninvited pressure. Frightened and ashamed to have stepped so indiscriminately, you carefully backed into the grandfather clock. His face cracked from too close of contact. I called out: “Can I help you?” You turned at my voice and rammed into the glass chandelier. It laughed brightly on its tumble to the floor. Finally you squared yourself comfortably, but you banged into the register and the hoard of wealth jangled and jumped. I would have kicked you out as soon as you came in and certainly once you stepped on my treasures but . . . I just can’t say no to elephants.
Rusalka
Note: the rusalka is a character in Slavic mythology. Also, the inscription if you can’t read the smaller print is: “I have gone out, a possessed witch/haunting the black air braver at night.” Anne Sexton, ‘Her Kind’
cosmonaut city
you can ignore this silly poem. (or read it, whatevs).
i was fiddling around with formatting. it was almost impossible.
hence my new attempt with digital scans. read those on Personal & Poetry.
all the people in cosmonaut city want to walk on the moon
but they wear lead shoes to keep the x-rays from piercing them through see what they’ve got on underneath is not the sort of starflower sunburst beam shining beautiful
thing that you expect
but that doesn’t stop them from reaching like they only live to feel that cratered dancefloor beneath their feet it takes just one rocket to break a ceiling chandelier and disco ball go falling and you’re up up a lunar leap away from stepping on that dusty weightless dark and dreamless empty empty moon